Page 8, line 32, paragraph (h), omit the paragraph, substitute the following
paragraph:

"(h) by omitting subsection (7).".

I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum in relation to those
amendments. Mr Speaker, as a result of the matters raised by the Scrutiny of
Bills Committee, on behalf of the Government, I propose these two amendments.
They are both to clause 15 of the Bill. They cover the approval and
publication of statutes. They have been developed in response to concerns of
the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation. The
Government agrees with the standing committee that under the present Bill it
may be difficult to distinguish between a legislative statute and an
administrative statute. To avoid this situation, the Government proposes that
all statutes made by the university should be disallowable by the Assembly.
Accordingly, I propose that subsections 42(3) and (4) of the University of
Canberra Act 1989 covering statute notification and tabling be omitted and a
new subsection 42(3) substituted. It makes all university statutes
disallowable for the purposes of section 10 of the Subordinate Laws Act 1989.
The notice provisions in the Subordinate Laws Act cover all university
statutes. Subsection 42(7) of the University of Canberra Act is therefore
unnecessary and should also be omitted.

I had some concern, as I think did my colleague Ms McRae, that by these
amendments we might be imposing an unreasonable burden on the university. I
note that there were some 34 statutes. I am advised that they have all, in
fact, gone through a similar procedure in the House of Representatives and the
Senate. Accordingly, whilst there is obviously some inconvenience, it is not
an unreasonable matter for the Scrutiny of Bills Committee to raise.
Accordingly, the Government has proposed, in accordance with the points raised
by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, these amendments, which I commend to the
Assembly.

MS McRAE (5.46): We will be agreeing to these amendments. They came
out of a recommendation of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, as Mr Stefaniak has
pointed out. They obviously did deserve attention. We did follow through to
see what level of inconvenience they would cause and whether, in fact, they
were necessary. The court is still out as to whether they are absolutely
necessary. It was a question of which statutes that the board of the
University of Canberra was actually putting through were legislative statutes
and which were not. Since the Scrutiny of Bills Committee felt that this may
cause questions of interpretation and disputes, it is probably easier to go
with the amendment and allow all statutes to be tabled in the Assembly.

The Minister said that there were 34. I thought that there were 64 statutes.
Anyway, I believe that an awful lot of these statutes are going to come past
our noses and sit here as disallowable instruments. It may be something that
we will seek to review in the future if they do end up creating a level of
cumbersomeness and unnecessary bureaucratic and legislative processes and do
not necessarily yield any productive results for the University of Canberra.